Butterflies and Flowers
by Anorexia
Summary: Girls with eating disorders were like butterflies and flowers. As time passed, the more withered they became. *Anorexia. Bulimia. Implied death. Sakura and Hinata oneshot.*


Disclaimer - I do not own Naruto.

Author note - Well, it's been about six months since I've last written anything here. Things have been pretty busy here with school, after-school activities, family stuff, all that lovely teenager junk. Lately I've been getting a high request for another eating disorder story, so, here it is. It's not my best work since I'm out of practice, but hopefully it will satisfy.

Also, I'm giving out a warning. This can be triggering. If you're self conscious I don't encourage you read this at all. I will _not_ be held responsible if you develop an eating disorder. I have given a warning and now _can not _be held responsible.

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Girls with eating disorders were like butterflies and flowers. As time passed, the more withered they became.

Haruno Sakura was a flower.

As the time passed her by, she became a beautiful young Kunoichi with impeccable talent in the healing arts. Blossoming in her Shinobi skills was not all she had blossomed in. An eating disorder had taken over her body and had - in the villagers eyes - transformed her into something that no Shinobi skill could. Anorexic. Distorted in the mind.

Sakura's body had transformed from a healthy and strong body to an elegantly thin and dancer like structure. Her skin had transformed from a healthy shade of peach to snow-white and was wrapped tightly over her bones. It appeared that a small tug would break the skin. Her knees looked even more knobbly and arms were no longer roung with muscle, but looked like a pair of thick chopsticks. Her beautifully polished nails were now chipped and slightly yellow and rested on body fingers supported by weak wrists.

When she was naked, she was even more striking. At night when she changed she did not look like a human. Naturally small breasts were now half in their size. Hipbones were further our than before and her tiny thighs made it complicated for her clothing to stay supported on her lower half. Her ribs were the most disturbing part of her. Once full of healthy muscle and skin were now nearly flesh less and fully countable.

Her mind was unstable. Standing up took more effort than it ever should. Her vision was blurred and felt light headed all the time. Even in hot weather, she was cold and was desperate to stay warm.

She started off as a seed. An innocent and beautiful child who had yet to see the hatred the world soon would place upon her. She would not know of the loss of love and life for many years. It was as a seed, when the world seemed perfect in her eyes.

A sprout was next. The beginning of memories and the sorrows of the world. Determination to become something great and beautiful rest deep within her eagerly beating heart. It is when she is a sprout when the worlds critique shows itself and begins to help stage her future.

For the longest time, Sakura rested as a bud waiting to bloom. The bud is the final preparation stage before the flower blooms. And for Sakura, it was the stage that made the final changes on who she would blossom into. In this stage, she began to worry about the things every girl worried about. Boys, friends, and weight. And in here, she began her eating disorder.

It started out of nowhere. Or at least, nothing she could recall truly sparked it. She was for certain that it didn't happen by choice a waking up and saying to herself that she would develop this illness, Sakura believed it was the years as a young Kunoichi that finally pushed her over the edge.

So it began.

From there, she began to limit her calorie intake, workout even more than before, and eventually worked her way to skipping a few meals. It made her irritable, obsessive, freakish, and she had never thought of the intention to give it up. Every morning she awoke to an intense workout, forgetting about the most important meal of the day. At her training, if she ate with her teammates, only a few bites of food entered her mouth. Being gone almost all the time had worked with this eating disorder to her advantage. On the few nights that she was home, playing a more common illness such as a stomach ache or a flu was easier to pass by when her parents hardly saw her. Unaware of her thin frame, they figured it was something she got from eating or that she picked up on her latest mission because of the new land. Her oblivious parents made it easy to skip dinner. Even when she off on missions, the food was easy to pass up. Pretending to be too tired or just not hungry at the moment helped fuel her lies in this disease.

Within the disease she blossomed into a flower. Elegant with stem-like features formed and could only be appreciated by a small number of people. It was unseen by the people of the village how much of a beautiful flower Sakura had become. Only so many would appreciate the beauty within an anorexic.

In her eyes, she hated everyone who spoke light of her illness. To her, they should have admired her hard work. It was not easy to do this to herself. Many years and plenty of effort was needed to make herself this way.

To hopefully make herself beautiful and thin.

She was emaciated and loved it. Sakura had matched a flower perfectly.

Hyuuga Hinata was butterfly.

She was a naturally awkward girl and left herself open for harsh critique. The first born of the Hyuuga clan, all eyes were upon her for greatness and nothing less was expected from someone of her bloodline. It was one of her father's greatest disappointments to see that the heiress failed to meet up to the standards. As a child she was often shy and rather jumpy, which carried on through the remainder of her childhood and teen years. Her early teen years had to be the hardest for her, she too transformed into a beautiful young woman. A bulimic.

Hinata once had the appearance of a healthy teenager. A still small frame, she was round in the hips and large in the breasts. A body type that made her attractive to men and the envy of some women. Her hands were perfect and looked like porcelain whenever she did her jutsu. After the bulimia took a hold of her, Hinata's appearance changed.

Like in all weight loss cases, her breasts went away first. They no longer were as full as they were before and ached. With the dehydration that came after every purge, her skin was no longer a healthy glowing ivory, but old and withered looking, like her skin had aged before the rest of her. The bottom of her legs and feet were swollen and looked out of balance with the rest of her body. And those beautiful hands were chipped and yellow on the nails while the knuckles had large red cuts and bruises upon them from her teeth. Her teeth had suffered a great deal, too. They were no longer white, but slowly rotting from the acid in her stomach and tinted yellow from that. Her esophagus was swollen and bruised and sometimes, it was hard for her to speak properly without sounding like she had a sore throat.

Her changes in appearance were not as noticeable as the flowers. When Hinata was naked the bones seen through her skin weren't anywhere near the amount that could be seen when Sakura removed her clothing. Though there was a significant difference in her weight and it was noticeable around her breasts, stomach, and thighs, it was more complicated for her to lose weight with the binge and purge cycle.

Signs of depression rose higher than before and though everyone dismissed as 'normal Hinata behaviour', it was clear to the very few who did recognize the symptoms that she was very sick. When confronted on rare occasions, she'd momentarily returned to normal. She'd turn pink and stutter away an excuse, just like her old self would.

Different in many ways but similar just the same, Hinata matched a butterfly.

Her youth was like an egg. Innocent and carefree in the world. Innocence never truly lasted that long in her life, but as her brief time as an egg, she enjoyed what she had while still meeting the expectations of her father as the eldest to the main branch of her clan.

As a caterpillar she began the binge cycle of her disease. Eating nonstop and always thinking about food, she feared deep down that she'd one day match the size of the Akimichi clan. During the caterpillar stage, she began her Shinobi training. This time she began to understand the heartaches that came with growing up and changing in the world. Her unnoticed admiration for a fellow Shinobi and struggles at home, helped keep the binge cycle alive. Close to the end of her caterpillar stage, she began to vomit.

Hinata stayed as a chrysalis for the longest time. It, like the stage of the bud, was the last step before finally spreading her wings and showing her beauty. As a chrysalis her binge and purge cycle was out of control. Every meal she ate her with her teammates of friends was shortly afterwards dismissed to the ceramic bowl. At night, when she was alone, she would binge on large amounts of food from being hungry and would eat everything she could get her hands on. Snack foods, sweets, easy to make dinners. Anything. Then, once she finished with her food, Hinata would stumble to the bathroom, lock the door and kneel down before the toilet.

Before the bowl she would stick two fingers down her throat and purge the things she had just finished devouring. In the discoloured contents in the bowl, she can not only see what she had finished eating but her father. The disappointment she brings him and the clan. Her teammates, and the frustration she gives them for being slower and not nearly as advanced as they are. Then she sees Uzumaki Naruto, whom she only wished would notice her. Through all of that, she can still see herself. The reason why her father loves Hanabi more, why her teammates are frustrated, and the one person who'll never capture Naruto's attention. When she flushes the toilet to hide the evidence of the purge, she feels relief. Like the worries of her life are momentarily gone.

The chrysalis stage was long, but finally, Hinata erupted from the cocoon and came out as a beautiful butterfly. It was longer for Hinata to change than it was for Sakura. Hinata's struggle of a binge and purge took longer than she had hoped for, but in the end, the result deeply satisfied her. Her appearance was similar to the flower. She was emaciated, too and was highly satisfied with her poking out bones. Others within the village gossiped about Hinatas change in appearance, some going as far to call her out on it. The bulimia did not change her reactions. Turning pink and stuttering, she'd answer with a classical Hinata answer, which only boggled more people.

Still, deep within she did not find herself to be fully completed. There, in her eyes, was still work to be done. To her, she would not stop until there was not a single ounce of fat upon her skin.

Hinata's journey was far from over and, like a butterfly, she needed to expand her wings and carry out the final movements of this journey.

Girls with eating disorders were like butterflies and flowers. As time passed, the more withered they became.

The flower and the butterfly. Both were beautiful things in nature. Full of untimely beauty and grace, they were often admired by humans until they began to wilt or show signs of age. It was at that time when people would comment on the disfigures of the beauty of nature. It was by then when they finally noticed that the time was near and it was too late for either one.

Anorexics and bulimics were only the same way. When they first show signs of their disease people do nothing but praise and admire them, just like the flower and the butterfly. Almost always it is too late for the girls when people notice they are about to wilt away to nothing. She is too far into the illness and at times, feels like there will never be an escape. Most of these flowers and butterflies meet an early end to what should have been a long and happy life.

But, like in nature, all beautiful things must die.

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Author note - I don't really like this one as much I was in the beginning. Sadly some things sound better in my head before I put it to paper. Some of you are probably wondering "what triggered their eating disorders?" Well...there could be lots of things. I personally find these two characters to be very vulnerable to peer pressure and other issues that we have in our lives, so, I'm letting you pick the reason behind it. Reasons why some people have eating disorders can't always be figured out. There isn't really an exact reason they develop (aside from a chemical imbalance and some other medical stuff that I'll probably bore you with if I go into). Hopefully I'll have another one of these as a full length story up soon.

Thank you for reading


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